Friday, June 25, 2004
Yahoo! News - Will the Boss Get Drafted?
Is the Boss born to run the GOP out of town?
That's the question being put to Bruce Springsteen by an ambitious concert promoter who has launched an online petition to persuade New Jersey's native son to headline a major rock concert in an attempt to steal the spotlight from the Republican National Convention.
The so-called Concert for Change would take place at Giants Stadium on Sept. 1, the same day President Bush is scheduled to accept his party's nomination to run for a second term at festivities across the Hudson River in New York's Madison Square Garden.
The petition and concert is the brainchild of Andrew Rasiej, a Big Apple-based producer of large-scale music festivals and a Democratic activist who says he wants "to find a way to deliver a simple yet powerful counter message to the Republican National Convention."
The promoter says that once expenses are met, all profits generated from ticket sales and TV rights for the Concert for Change would go toward voter-registration drives by organizations like the League of Woman Voters or Rock the Vote.
Bruuuuuuce! We need you now, man.
Springsteen has always been sensitive to the use of his name and songs for political purposes. He spoke out against Ronald Reagan's description of "Born in the U.S.A." as a patriotic anthem, when the '80s anthem was an indictment of the ugly reception Vietnam veterans received after the war.
Every election cycle, Springsteen routinely fields requests from both parties to use the tune in political ads and repeatedly rejects them.
This I never could understand. "Born in the USA" is a subtle slam on America. I don't think these politicians have ever really listened to the lyrics.